‘This set is obviously the outcome of a thorough, deeply pondered approach. It more then renders justice to Sweelinck's music by bringing out its variety, inventiveness and fanciful exuberance. Strongly recommended’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘This is really inspiring playing with some compelling insights into the structure of Sweelinck's often monumental pieces’ (Early Music Review)

‘A loving performance of sweeping emotional impact … the quartet's buzzing, humming, piercing presence packs a gratifying wallop’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘This is music for consenting adults only. Imagine the steamier bits of Wagner's Tristan, the mystical frenzy of Skryabin and the lusciousness of Ravel's String Quartet combined together, and you'll have some idea of Karol Szymanowski's two string quartets … the Royal String Quartet do them proud’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘These Polish musicians give rich-hued and intelligent performances of each of the three works … Szymanowski's First Quartet is strongly individual music … a decade later, the Second Quartet is expressed with yet more confidence’ (The Sunday Times)

‘They play Szymanowski's two quartets with exactly the right combination of local folksy fervour and the textural variety that their country's most important composer after Chopin shared with his modernist contemporaries. The results are the finest performances of these two compact and luminously intense works currently available’ (The Guardian)

‘This is what Szymanowski needs: firm, full-bodied playing, with a wide range of dynamic, colour and attack, and with all the unexpected twists and turns confidently negotiated … in every way this comfortably outstrips the disappointing recording by the Schoenberg quartet, making a persuasive bid for best available version … the clarity of the recording lets the myriad details speak eloquently’ (Gramophone)

‘This welcome new disc … the Royals have a special feeling for texture and colour, which is vital in this music, but an equally strong sense of structure … every note in these pieces remains distinctive and original—confirming Szymanowski as a still underrated master of the medium. Making what must now count as the best recording of these works even more satisfying, the Szymanowski quartets are wrapped around the String Quartet of Różycki … a hidden gem’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘The beautiful 24-year-old Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova teams with French pianist Cedric Tiberghien to prove that Szymanowski's violin music is the most impressive of his chamber music, especially the Scriabinesque Violin Sonata in D-minor Op 9. An exceptional disc’ (The Buffalo News, USA)

‘Ibragimova's stunningly potent technique—the stuff of legend even in the close scrutiny of the digital age—is soon forgotten in a sensuous croon through which the more extravagantly impossible the violinistic hurdles, the more ecstatically glorious her tone becomes. Indeed, hurdles do not exist for her, and the usual descriptive and critical terms are useless, if only because they suggest comparison with other artists suddenly dwarfed by the incomparable. Such phrases as 'a tonal palette ranging from guttural coruscation to the most brilliantly glowing scintillance' simply will not do. There is a touch of the uncanny here, even a suggestion of the human voice—as of whispers, sighs, moans, wailing—in which the notes dissolve into a direct spiritual prehension. Ibragimova does not play or perform—she utterly possesses’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘Ibragimova and Tiberghien produce beautifully characterised accounts, whether in the veiled contours of the Nocturne and the explosion of rhythmic energy that follows it in the Tarantella, or in the refined exoticism of Mythes, with its strange mixture of classical evocation and sensuous indulgence’ (The Guardian)

‘The early violin sonata is especially fine, as are the little-known Paganini caprices’ (The Evening Standard)